


A Compass of Hope

by deathmallow



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: AU, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 14:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post AWE, goes AU.  Bootstrap Bill was asleep on the job, and so Norrington has abandoned the EIC. After Singapore, Elizabeth and James attempt to rebuild their lives.  And as James tells himself, a great deal can happen in ten years...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Compass of Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another "posted at The Pit" first something like five years back.

"I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern"

_Thomas Jefferson_

_February, 1753_

Listening to her cries of pain, he was right now more terrified than he had been when he had chased down Francis Garrough; there he'd received the wound that had festered in the heat of a Chesapeake summer. The injury left him in his sickbed burning with fever while Garrough and his lieutenants hanged by the Baltimore quay.

He had been convinced he would die, and even now the scar lay close to his heart. But this…this could strike even more painful and true.

More than anything, more than the fear of her dying in pain and blood as his mother had, he feared that she would call him to her bedside, say that the child was a boy, and that she had decided to call him William for his father.

Eight months now since the hellish days in Singapore, eight months since her lover, her love, had sacrificed himself to eternal servitude as the captain of the _Dutchman_. Eight months since Will Turner had thrust a dagger into his belt and left the _Pearl_ to go kill Davy Jones, eyes clear with resolve.

He had spent the better part of a fortnight to that point trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. There was no love for him on the _Pearl_. He knew the men named him fickle, with as many turnings as a fox. They feared he might betray them yet again.

He understood too well that he stood outside the brethren of these pirate seamen. He worked alongside them to earn his place, but their respect wasn't for offer. If he should fall from the shrouds, nobody would leap to grab his hand and save him. Still, he was first to the mast, to any task put to him. If these men found fault with his loyalties, at least he'd be damned if they found fault with his work.

He had looked a fright that summer afternoon, he knew. Admiral's uniform thrown overboard in favor of the loose canvas trousers and shirt of any ordinary jack-tar, hair coming loose from its queue in the winds, dirty as a chimneysweep from tar and gunpowder. But for all the quiet accusation, all the backbreaking labor, he was content. His choice had been made, and he stood with clean conscience for the future.

Turner had glanced at him, leaned close. "I don't think to return, Com—" He corrected himself. "Mister Norrington."

"Don't speak of such things," he'd replied. "You have a wife to come back to. Is destroying Jones' heart so important that you would break Elizabeth's?"

"You taught me of duty from the time I was a boy," Turner said fiercely. "So I remember that I serve others…not just myself. I forgot that these last months."

He'd nodded. The words finally came, little more than a whisper. "I forgot as well—for a time. What do you ask of me?"

"Care for her. She'll need it in days to come."

He understood the implication—that he should marry her—and said nothing of the absurdity of it. How could he care for her, when he had no notion of his own future? Certainly he'd burned his bridges in the Royal Navy, and now to the East India Company. All he'd known from thirteen was the sea. "I swear it." Whatever tarnish on his honor, at least his word was still good when given.

Turner had nodded. "Maybe it would have been best, had it been you from the beginning," he'd said with a regretful smile, and then jumped into the dinghy with a shout to lower away.

It had been something of a difficult vow to make. Time and circumstance had changed them both from the naïve young people they had been before Jack Sparrow had forced their lives on a different heading. She had broken his heart, shamed him in front of Port Royal. He couldn't love her with the same easy trust as before. But honor demanded he give his word, demanded that he look after a woman he still cared for.

And Heaven knew he was eager to grasp any chance of redeeming his honor. He had redeemed his career, at horrible cost. The admiralship had been little against the price he paid in blood and shame and dishonor. He had caused just fear in the pirates as a commodore, but as the East India Company's admiral, he had sown terror on innocent and guilty alike. Perhaps this was to be some part of his penance.

He had given her time and space to mourn her loss on the long journey; through the Pacific, the ferocious Straits of Magellan, then the Atlantic. They had spoken of small things, as friends would, but he never brought forth the subject of marriage. Such a thing had to be approached delicately, and he had no eagerness to seem ghoulish with too hasty a proposal.

She had come to him on deck in misery one starlit night near Rio de Janeiro as he was taking the celestial sightings. Standing in silence for several minutes as he finished his task, she had confessed that she was expecting a child. Such strength…only a moment's quaver in her voice betrayed her mingled grief and hope, and a plaintive uncertainty.

And with that, he had understood that her condition must have been some divine sign that the time had come for him to make his amends: to her and Turner both. He had asked her that same night. She had accepted. He had gone to his hammock amidst the snoring and farting deckhands, and she to the solitude of the captain's great-cabin, without even a kiss to seal the bargain.

They had landed in the Carolinas, in Charlestowne. He'd quickly signed on aboard a merchantman bound to sail in a fortnight now with fine cotton for the Lancashire mills, and the valuable indigo to make dye. They'd married as soon as the banns could be read. He still knew that Elizabeth's belly was clearly visible. Gossip would ensue, of course, although they wouldn't realize that it wasn't the result of a man and his intended being too hasty to experience the pleasures of the marriage bed. He'd sworn that he should treat the babe as if of his own blood. Faced now with reality, he could only reflect that vows of intent was fine and well, but he would only know the truth of his resolve once it was tested by the child's presence.

The wedding ceremony was quiet and austere, far from the fairy-tale wedding that a girlish Elizabeth had chattered about to him. He saw little cause for any pretense at celebration; particularly he knew they both keenly felt the ache of Weatherby Swann's absence. It still covered him with shame to know that while he had no part in his father-in-law's death, he had been unable to prevent it, and too blind to realize it.

A fine bridal pair they made: a noble commodore turned shabby pirate turned dishonorable admiral now once again in disgrace, and a pirate queen showing an eight month's belly with the babe of a blacksmith's apprentice.

He had no inkling of whether or not she might have permitted him to be her husband in truth. They'd shared a bed on their wedding night, at least. But the swell of the child, aside from the uncertainties between them, made anything further impossible. She had surprised him by reaching for his hand in the night, clasping it in her own slim-fingered one.

He didn't have the heart to speak up, fearful that she thought him Turner, and the sound of his voice would shatter her illusion. He'd lain awake in the dark for long minutes, feeling oddly sorrowful.

He had loved her so fiercely a scarce five years before that he had been willing to let her use him to her ends. He'd sooner have been made a fool than cause her misery. In his way, he loved her still. Aside from the chasteness of their bed, it should have felt different from the few dockside mollies he'd gone with as a stupid youth—if he'd fallen low enough to have engaged in any fornication in Tortuga, he'd fortunately been too rum-soaked to recall it.

But he realized, too late, that he'd bought her just the same, only with a name and a wedding ring instead of coin. Cowardly as it was, he was unsurprised that some part of him should look forward to the escape of his fickle mistress' embrace again. The sea at least only would dare to take his life. His heart, his soul, though: Elizabeth Swann—Turner— _Norrington_ , he corrected himself, took them as her due and twisted them so painfully with her every word, every gesture.

His honor now cost him every time that she looked at him and he could see in the deep ochre of her eyes that she wished another man in his place. She fancied herself marvelously subtle, but since he had known her, her moods were as obvious as a coming rain squall. And he had known her fifteen years, since he had been a freshly commissioned lieutenant of nineteen and she was a bright-eyed girl of ten on the crossing from England. She was twenty-five now, and he had learned that she was more a tigress to be respected and admired than a kitten to be cosseted and adored. As for himself…his fourth decade, he thought wryly, had not been kind thus far. This would now be thrice that he'd been forced to remake his life in that time.

Much as he'd served with them from necessity of late, something in his recently rediscovered sense of fair play and decency baulked at continuing with piracy. Dashing rogues, some of them, but some no better than cutthroats, and thieves to a man. Charlestowne had passed its heyday of piracy thirty years before with the likes of Teach and Roberts, Rackham and Bonney. It was now a duly respectable merchant port, so his name and reputation as a scourge of the Caribbean pirates were unknown. The master of the _Storm Petrel_ had asked little beyond his name and his experience. Hearing that he was a former officer of the Royal Navy—he'd deliberately omitted any mention of achieving flag rank—with twenty years at sea, Captain Elias had brightened considerably.

His reasons for resigning his commission, it seemed, were to remain his own. He had the suspicion that more than one disgruntled naval man had ended up in the Americas. And with a shortage of skilled seamen, few questions were asked when one wished to sign on. So when the position of second mate was offered, he'd accepted without hesitation. He'd become accustomed to being the master of a ship for a good eight years…he'd resign himself to being under the command of others again. Merchant service might not have much prestige, but it was solid work. And it would support Elizabeth and the babe. For that, he would swallow his pride, bitter bread though it was.

The child…Elizabeth's voice rose in another last whimpering cry. She sounded like an animal facing its death. He sprang to his feet, pushing the door open.

The midwife's assistant was coming out the door. Before she could scold him again, he barked at her, his voice automatically assuming the tones of one trained to command. "Good God, woman, don't think to stop me. She sounds done to death!"

She looked down her nose at him—a feat for a woman who barely reached his shoulder. "You've a healthy daughter, Mister Norrington. And your wife is well."

Now his ears caught the softer whimper inside the room, and he pushed past her. As he approached her, she looked at him, face lined with exhaustion. She wept, tears trailing down her cheeks, but she smiled and laughed through it. "She's lovely, James."

He looked down at the swaddled bundle as the midwife handed it to him, at the crumpled red face. She looked up at him with a bemused expression, seeming as startled as he was. _Mine_ , something in him whispered fiercely. She could claim Turner's blood, but he would be the one there for next ten years and beyond. Cautiously he adjusted his hold to better cradle her, almost afraid of how fragile she seemed. "What shall we," he dared to use the plural, craving for her to include him, "call her?"

Elizabeth settled against the pillows with a quiet, bone-weary sigh of righteous exhaustion. He recognized the sound all too well after having spending hours on deck in the teeth of a gale, pushed beyond strength to mute endurance between life and death. She mustered a tired smile. "I thought perhaps Felicity…for good fortune."

Good fortune, he thought, was something they could all hope for in coming days. God willing, maybe this child might bring some of it.

A fortnight later, recovered from childbed, she and Felicity came to the docks to bid him farewell. She fretted a little over him in wifely fashion, brushing imagined specks from the dark blue broadcloth of his new mate's coat, tidying the ribbon binding his queue. Her fussing surprised him, but he withstood it gladly. One of the men leaned over the railing and called cheerfully, "Give him a good farewell, missy!"

" _Belay that_ ," came the bull's bellow of Hornby, the third mate. "Get back to work, Diencker, you sorry sack of shit!" A moment's pause, and a sheepish shout of, "Beg your pardon for the profanity, Missus Norrington!"

He chuckled at that, and was relieved to see that her lips curved in a smile as well. He kissed Felicity on the forehead, ruffling the fine silken wisps of her fair hair. Looking at Elizabeth, he hesitated. Her attentions had caused some of his feelings to shyly peek from the distant corners of his soul where he had stowed them. Hope given wing, he leaned down and kissed her, more warmly than he'd dared at their wedding.

After ascertaining she hadn't recoiled in horror, he said, "Be well, Elizabeth. I'll return in a few months." Mustering a last smile, he leapt for the gangplank.

Relaying orders from the pilot, he glanced towards the dock and saw the bright blue of her cloak still there. Did she raise an arm, or had he just imagined it? Some part of him wanted to run to the ratlines and climb them like a teenaged midshipman, to hang from the heights and thus hold her in his view for as long as possible.

But to look back had been Orpheus' folly: glancing back at hell had cost him dearly. Perhaps he too had looked back for too long, held too much grief and guilt and doubt.

This merchantman was a slow, steady girl, and he too was plain and unremarkable in his sober broadcloth and cotton. It was a far sight from the dashing glamour of trim warships and brocade and gold braid that had been his former life. But he no longer wore sorrow and shame from betrayal and bloodshed as he had back then. He looked at the hazy horizon of the Carolina morning, smelling the freshness of a westward wind. Here was a new chance, and he'd better make the best of it. His life had long belonged to her, but he knew that her daughter had snared him just as surely.


End file.
